Your Voice: Election Views

August 02, 2001

Openness must be rule

I am committed to opening doors in government, getting to the truth and finding answers to public policy issues that work for the citizens of the new 91st District. Those are the reasons I am running for the House of Delegates.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Friday, August 3, 2001.A letter on Thursday's op-ed page, "A political independent," was edited to incorrectly refer to Tom Gear as a political independent. Gear is seeking the Republican nomination for the 91st District House of Delegates seat. The full letter by John L. Voss of Hampton is on today's editorial page. (Text corrected.)

Del. Phil Larrabee, R-Hampton, conveniently forgets that I asked him to craft legislation to tighten the exemption introduced in the 2001 session, then pulled it to avoid a fight with local government groups.

Rather than standing up and pushing the bill through the process, Larrabee took the easy way out and acquiesced to the "utility" solution for difficult ideas -- send it somewhere to be studied.

Why not? It gets the bureaucrat lobbyists off your back and gives the legislator a plausible escape line -- "The idea is not dead. It is being studied by experts and I await the experts' opinion."

The truth is that at the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council's June meeting Larrabee backed a proposal by the City of Hampton to broaden the exemption, not tighten it.

Openness needs to be the rule, not the exception in government. Elected officials and their hired administrators should serve the public by seeking less secrecy, not more.

City Manager George Wallace, City Attorney Paul Burton, Larrabee and any City Council members who would support throwing a cloak over "working papers" must realize: The taxpayers already have money in the game. How that money is spent is their business.

Hampton taxpayer dollars paid for a report commissioned to study the feasibility of building a convention center. When the study was completed Wallace insisted, despite my repeated requests that it be released, that it be kept secret. He contended it contained valuable market information that would aid potential competitors.

Under Virginia's Freedom of Information Act, government "working papers" are shielded from public scrutiny. But the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council says that right to secrecy ended when Hampton City Council voted on the convention center. So, the Hampton City administration now says, change the law.

In Virginia, a Freedom of Information Act was first enacted in 1968. The act has just undergone a sweeping revision. In at least three previous rewrites nearly all of the changes were designed to put further limits on excessive secrecy and to discourage petty, complicated obstacles to access that citizens frequently encounter.

Whether new laws are to be enacted or old ones tossed, a citizen's "right to know" must be zealously protected. Only then can we restore public trust in representatives and government.

Thomas D. Gear

Hampton

A political independent

Tom Gear has consistently shown the people in our community that he is deeply aware and concerned about the issues that face constituents within our city and district.

We have waited for someone to represent us in Richmond who would bring us respect and credibility when representing our interests in the House of Delegates. Gear will do that and more.

As a political independent, I support Gear and urge others to support him also in the forthcoming primary election.

John L. Voss

Hampton

Bureaucratic panic

Hampton City Councilman Tom Gear asked a very simple question regarding the Virginia Freedom of Information Act: Should a career bureaucrat, who works for the citizens' elected representatives, be able to use the FOIA text to deny those representatives access to information on which the bureaucrat is basing a proposal for spending tax dollars?

Taxpayers are not career bureaucrats, who have a congenital mindset that elected officials must be protected from themselves -- notwithstanding the views of citizens who elected them. Consequently, taxpayers probably didn't understand the panic in Richmond last February when the fruits of Gear's efforts hit the street.

Del. Phil Larrabee did not understand the potential for bureaucratic panic inherent in Gear's proposal when he agreed to sponsor the legislation. Larrabee's subsequent maneuvering is understandable, if less than commendable.

Larrabee's defense of his activities in this area, as portrayed in the July 23 op-ed ("Misconceptions on changes to FOIA"), is a clever bit of rhetoric.

His staff is to be commended for this effort. By stringing a series of unrelated facts together in a tortured context, his staff attempts to throw the casual reader off the scent of the true implications of the events.

Gear is a member of Hampton City Council, and it was in that role that he sought the assistance of the delegate from the city who was in the House of Delegates majority.

Mary Christian was also available, but guess what her chances of success would have been?

Did Gear do right by the citizens of Hampton in taking the cause to the delegate who sat with the majority?